


By flash and thunder fire I'll survive

by jessikast



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Affection, Alcohol, Angel Wings, Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Canon, Wingfic, bad memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 06:59:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19329463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessikast/pseuds/jessikast
Summary: “Aren’t you meant to have wings?” Adam asked. “We’ve been talking about it, and Pepper thinks that when I saw you with wings it was just my mind creating a framework of perceived reality but Brian thinks they’re just invisible and Wensley said it didn’t matter because you wouldn’t be able to fly because the wingspan needed to lift a human body is too big.”Crowley opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Oh, Aziraphale can explain it so much better than me,” he said.***After the End of the World, Crowley and Aziraphale get a bit drunk and talk about wings, the light of heaven and the lack thereof. Someone briefly transforms into a snake. Backs are stroked, and good feelings had.





	By flash and thunder fire I'll survive

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly tv-canon, but it's possible book background has crept in.
> 
> Title from "Seven Seas of Rhye", which is my favourite Queen song even as I have no idea what the lyrics _mean_.
> 
> Un-betaed. I write fanfic once in a blue moon but - like many people, it seems! - I've been happily sucked into this fandom and it won't let me go.
> 
> This fic is a bit tamer than I planned, but it seemed to have a good stopping point. I subscribe to the "They really really love each other even if they haven't Made an Effort" yet school of thought.

All angels gleamed.

A smattering of gold or silver; occasionally something that was the essence of a precious gem. Something that was iridescent, reflected the light and glory of the Divine.

Even before he Fell, Crowley’s eyes had been burnished gold. Less of the slit pupil, but the colour hadn’t changed a lot. He’d also had gold flecks down the line of his spine which had changed too, after the Fall. Gold turned into black, taking on the shape and texture of snake scales. All in all, it could have been worse. Puss and flies and a frog-on-your-head worse, so Crowley took it as a win.

The topic came up after a Little Gathering at Anathema’s cottage. (Anathema and Newt had just kind of…stayed in Tadfield. Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale wanted to articulate the idea that their decision-making had at all been influenced by the fact that Adam had decided he liked them and wouldn’t have wanted them to leave. Anathema and Newt had come up with good enough reasons, which _mostly_ made sense.) A month after the End of the World, she had invited Aziraphale and Crowley to a Little Gathering to celebrate Newt’s new job.

(The kind of company that did business in Tadfield was the kind of company that still did its accounts in ledger books with – at most – the aid of an old calculator. Newt didn’t really want to be an accountant, but having overheard himself being referred to as a “bright young man” with “a solid future here, keep an eye on that one!” – well, it was a welcome novelty. Mrs Pulsifer was very proud.)

Crowley hadn’t fully appreciated the danger of the Them until he and Aziraphale were cornered by four inquisitive eleven-year-olds. Adam had clearly been doing some research, and was brandishing a copy of New Aquarian magazine whose cover proclaimed “ANGELS They Walk Among Us _Stories of Guardian Angels and How To Meet Yours_ ”. There was an illustration of a chubby naked cherub holding hands with a haloed, nightgown-wearing Angel. Both were supposed to look beatific; Crowley thought they looked constipated.

“Aren’t you meant to have wings?” Adam asked. “We’ve been talking about it, and Pepper thinks that when I saw you with wings it was just my mind creating a framework of perceived reality but Brian thinks they’re just invisible and Wensley said it didn’t matter because you wouldn’t be able to fly because the wingspan needed to lift a human body is too big.”

Crowley opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Oh, Aziraphale can explain it so much better than me,” he said.

“Hm!” said Aziraphale. “Well, we’re not really meant to…that it’s, it’s rather frowned upon by head office these days, and it’s all rather metaphysical anyway…” What followed was a solid five minutes in which Aziraphale managed to neither confirm nor deny the existence of angel or demon wings, but somehow managed to give the impression that they were something in-between imaginary and a metaphor and (almost) miraculously, managed to make the subject of wings so boring that the Them gave up and wandered off to play with Dog. Only Adam looked back with an expression that promised that he still had questions.

Hours later, Crowley followed Aziraphale into the back room of the bookshop and dropped straight onto the couch as Aziraphale went for a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Well, that was slightly awkward.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Indeed. I’m afraid I’m a little out of practice with humans who know what I really am. And certainly humans with whom I would have a conversation about it all, rather than a Heavenly Visitation – do you remember when that was the done thing, turning up with wings and halo-“

“Or horns-“

“You never had horns! – and proclaiming a blessing while the poor human cowered away?”

“Mm. Glad that went out of style. I’ve always preferred the more subtle temptations.” Crowley accepted a glass of wine and moved over slightly to make room for Aziraphale to join him on the sofa. They drank for a moment in silence, appreciating the very nice vintage. “When was the last time you had your wings out anyway, angel? Don’t think I didn’t notice how comfortable you looked when we were in that-“ A vague handwave indicated ‘a place just around the corner of space and time as we know it’.

Aziraphale was quiet for a moment. He looked pensive before clearly making an effort to pull an ‘I’m fine’ smile onto his face. “Oh, decades probably. Not much call for them these days, and certainly not so much room to stretch out in the shop! And besides, you know how I feel about this coat, I know the wings don’t really make holes in the fabric but garments just aren’t the same after.”

“I miss it,” Crowley said bluntly. “I’m out of the…habit, I suppose, but sometimes I feel so cramped. And flying…”

Angel and demon took a moment to drain their glasses. Aziraphale refilled them. “Well, _flying_ ,” he said eventually. “I haven’t dared since humans invented cameras, and it was risky even before then. It was…nice. I always liked seeing the human villages at night, the little lights twinkling away in the darkness.”

“Flying was a bit frowned upon by my side,” said Crowley. “Not all the demons kept their wings. It was seen as…hubris. Trying to be like the _enemies_ , not embracing our new station, and all that.” He remembered Falling, seeing the brilliant white of his wings being stripped as he fell until it was blinding light streaming above, and being so afraid that it wasn’t just the colour but the feathers themselves being torn from his body. When he’d landed in the stink and sulphurous heat of hell, on pile of fellow newly-born demons like nothing so much as corpses thrown into a mass grave, he’d crawled out, disoriented and in shock. He hadn’t cried until he realised that his wings were still there – that no matter what else had been stripped away, the grace of Heaven had given him that small mercy.

The memory called for more alcohol. Crowley indulged. Aziraphale had the slightly distant stare which meant that he back in a memory of his own. Whatever it was, it also called for alcohol. The glasses were topped up again.

A little while later, Aziraphale laboriously sat himself upright and spoke with the peculiarly preciseness of the Very Drunk. “I have to admit,” he said, “I did wonder. With the whole snerp…seper…snake thing-“ And here he waved a hand to encompass all of Crowley. “That whole feathered serpent stuff. Winged snaked. Wyvern? Am-phip-tere, that’s it!” He leaned forward. “Was that you?”

Crowley groaned and dropped his head against the back of the sofa. “That was ssssso indug…inDIGnified. Someone downstairs got the idea in the BLOODY fourteenth century. The worst. ‘Cause it was on heraldry. Meant to be good when tempting nobbly. Nobiles. Nobility.” He gestured broadly with his glass, which was luckily empty. “Thank Sss…whoever that they gave it up.”

Aziraphale’s expression grew very intense. “Can you still do it?”

Crowley thought for a moment. “I suppose sssso. Like a bicycle. Riding it. Falling off it. Or was that horses? I hate horses.” He hauled himself to his feet, removed his sunglasses, put them and the wine glass down very carefully, wavered slightly, then thought _snake_ and fell forward.

Usually, the result of this was a human-shaped demon starting to fall, landing on the ground as elegant heavy coils of black snake. Unfortunately, Crowley was a) out of practise, and b) very drunk. He toppled like a tree, face first onto the floor. A second too late with a slight ‘pop’ of displaced air, he transformed into a snake. A moment later there was another, whooshier ‘pop’ as the snake acquired wings. The wings were diminutive, and completely ineffective for, say, flying. “Owwwwwww,” hissed Crowley. (Somehow, even in words without sibilants, everything Crowley said as a snake was hissed. It was rather impressive, when he stopped to think about it.)

Aziraphale had the pursed lips and bright eyes of someone trying very, very hard not to laugh. An inherently good being, he was usually very good at not laughing at another’s misfortune. It would have been _mean_. Unfortunately, he was also very drunk, and the sight of snake-Crowley wriggling and using its oddly-proportioned wings to flap and balance in an effort to rear up was simply too much. A small giggle escaped.

“Oh, sssssshut it,” said Crowley, without heat. He didn’t blame Crowley for laughing. The idea of a winged serpent was always, he felt, better than the execution, and there was a reason he had been happy to leave it in the fourteenth century. Crowley managed to get enough height to flop the top third of his body onto the sofa. Aziraphale ran an apologetic hand over the back of his neck and with a small harrumph Crowley allowed himself to slither onto Aziraphale’s lap. This kind of casual touching tended to creep in when they were both drunk – was, he thought, part of the reason they got drunk in the first place, for an excuse. Ethereal beings didn’t have the same innate need for touch that humans did, but when you had occupied a mostly-human-type body for six-thousand years, indulgences like that became a wanted habit. It was easier to get away with it when one of you was currently a snake, too, but Crowley found himself wanting his usual form – being a snake while drunk was, he now discovered, Very Odd and not entirely pleasant. Plus the wings were tiny and silly.

“Hold on a ssssec,” he hissed, and with a sigh of relief flowed back into his human form, still lying face-down on the sofa, head resting on Aziraphale’s knee. The wings stayed, grew to the right proportions and Crowley let them stretch out (carefully; he might be drunk but he didn’t fancy angelic wrath for knocking over a shelf) then settle back, one over the back of the sofa, one across the floor. “Ohhhh, that feels good,” he groaned.

“My dear, you’re not wearing any…” Aziraphale muttered. Crowley could hear the blush in his voice. His manifested clothes had dissolved away when he turned into a snake and he hadn’t bothered replacing them. Too fiddly. He groped at the back of the sofa and – having expected to find one – pulled a crocheted blanket out from under his wing and pulled it down awkwardly across his lower body. “There,” he said, muffled in Aziraphale’s knee. “Decent.”

“You old snake, you’re never _really_ decent,” said Aziraphale fondly.

Crowley turned his head to the other side so he was facing Aziraphale, and peered up at him blearily. “Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say,” he said politely. Aziraphale just gave him one of those little, happy smiles – the kind that made him sort of glow and which made Crowley’s stomach twist in a not-unpleasant way. In the past Crowley would have made a joke or changed the subject but lately he’d found himself just…indulging those looks. This time, without really thinking about it, he felt the corner of his own mouth quirk in a small answering grin.

Aziraphale leaned forward enough to shrug off his jacket. “I suppose since we’re talking about it anyway, I might as well.” White wings manifested with a flutter of feathers, the back of the sofa just short enough for Aziraphale to stretch them down over the back of it. Crowley could feel the slight wriggle as Aziraphale let everything settle into place, then the exhalation as his whole body seemed to relax. “Oh, that _is_ rather a relief!” Aziraphale said. “I like my usual corporation well enough, but I think I’d forgotten…how did you put it? Cramped? How cramped it can feel.”

“Mm,” agreed Crowley. “I suppose it’s easier for you anyway. When you look human you look…human. No sunglasses, no scales, no forked tongue…”

“You never have a forked tongue!”

“I do sometimes,” Crowley said, and poked it out to demonstrate. “If I’ve been a snake it sometimes just…takes a while longer to turn back. Or it’s handy. Better sense of smell.” He flicked it out again. “See? The books, the wine, you. It’s nisssce. Probably a good thing it didn’t turn up when you were being me. Hell,” he said seriously, “smells very, very bad. Tastes worse.”

“Hmm, yes, that would have been awkward,” Aziraphale replied. “It was interesting, though, didn’t you think? If you’d asked me millenia ago, I would have said being a demon would be very different, but we’re not really. Just some things…” Aziraphale’s hand had lifted to hover just over Crowley’s shoulder blades. “These, um,” he gestured down Crowley’s back, “scales? I suppose when I saw them I’d always assumed they were like your eyes. You know, ‘demonic’. Oh, but that’s not to say I think your eyes are demonic! I think they’re very pretty. Golden. Oh dear…” He paused for a moment, flustered.

“Angel, what on earth are you getting at?” Crowley asked. He thought if he were a little more sober he would be bristling at the question, six-thousand years of being slightly sensitive about the eyes he could never truly hide, but he was feeling warm and relaxed and over embarrassment having just given a great demonstration of how to do a bellyflop on land, and found himself agreeably curious about where Aziraphale was going.

“I felt them, when I was in your body. When we swapped. I thought they were just…scales, but it was like…like when you’ve forgotten a word and it’s just on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite remember it. Only as a physical sensation. Somehow.” Aziaphale’s hand was still just over Crowley’s back, not quite touching, but not quite asking either. With a sign, Crowley closed his eyes and shrugged one shoulder up a little until his skin met fingers. They startled, then dropped again to gingerly stroke down Crowley’s spine. Crowley could feel Aziraphale gently running his fingers over skin and smooth scale.

“It was from before I Fell. Before I was a demon it was where I had…” Crowley lifted his hand off the sofa to gesture vaguely back over his shoulder. “Gold. You know. When I got to Hell, it was like this.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, it rude of me to ask…” Azriaphale said quietly. His fingers didn’t stop stroking, though.

“’S fine. Who else is going to ask anyway?” _Who else would want to ask?_ , thought Crowley. “I think it’s just…it’s meant to be reflecting Heaven. That divine light, you know how fucking bright it is there. And it’s like…it’s like scar tissue. But it’s not numb. All of the demons are like that. Where they used to shine they…don’t, it becomes ugly. And some of them can’t stand it, they try to burn it off in the hellfire, or cut it out so they don’t feel.” Crowley felt his voice quaver slightly, for just a moment. It was another memory from early in Hell, after the rebellion when the canon-fodder demons had started to really, truly understand what they’d lost and were never getting back. Some had taken turns mutilating each other. (The higher-ups took notes for torture ideas.) One had gotten his hands on holy water somehow. Crowley thought the demon had supposed it would be like an acid burn. It…hadn’t worked like that.

Aziraphale just breathed for a moment. His hand rested flat on the skin between Crowley’s shoulder blades, on the space between his wings where the scales flared out a little before trailing in a finer line to the small of his back. When Aziraphale spoke again, he sounded like he’d sobered up. “You must believe, my dear, you’re not ugly. Not any part of you. I don’t… I think the scales are very handsome. I hope I’ve never given you reason to think otherwise.”

Crowley turned his face down for a second into Aziraphale’s leg and breathed in shakily. When he exhaled, it was with the slight effort of removing the alcohol from his blood stream. He hadn’t realised how much that little doubt, that frission of _ugly demon_ had felt like shame until he’d heart the sincerity in Aziraphale voice. He lifted the wing on the back of the sofa forward so the bend pressed gently on Azriaphale’s wing in thanks, even as he turned his face back to Aziraphale and spoke in a brisker tone of voice.

“What’s yours, anyway? I don’t remember seeing anything. Ever, actually, in six thousand years.” To Crowley’s delight, a slight blush was touching Aziraphale’s cheeks. “Ohhh, is it somewhere _embarrassing_? I didn’t have to undress your body when we swapped, should I have been having a…poke around?”

“It’s nothing like that!” Aziraphale said sternly. “If you must know, it’s…” He tightened his lips for a moment and waved the hand not on Crowley’s back towards his own head. “My hair.” Crowley’s mouth opened in a truly delighted grin. Aziraphale glared at him. “I sort of…dulled it down when I was assigned to Earth and I supposed it’s habit now. Even when I reported in to Heaven it didn’t seem worth the effort to let it go back and forth.”

Crowley tried to picture it, and started to snigger. “Angel, do you really have a _halo_?” He remembered the magazine Adam had. Aziraphale’s expression was, as a matter of fact, rather similar to that constipated angel on the cover.

“I have been told, that in some lights, the effect might be vaguely similar to…some human artworks depicting…..oh, _really_ , Crowley!”

Crowley wasn’t even trying to hold back the laughter. The mental image was too delightful, Aziraphale’s stuffy put-on annoyance too much fun, one of Aziraphale’s wings was stretched forward to lay over his own, and the hand on his back between his wings was still absently stroking along the scales.

He thought that for a moment they had something bright to reflect after all.


End file.
